1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a printing system including at least one printer for printing images on sheets in accordance with electrical image and control signals fed to the printer, a control unit for feeding electrical image and control signals to the at least one printer, and an input unit for receiving and feeding the electrical image signals to the control unit. The control unit includes an operating unit for generating control signals relating to a document-finishing operation for the sheets to be printed by the at least one printer, wherein the operating unit selects a document-finishing operation to be effected by the at least one printer. A display device displays the operating information and a visual representation of a sheet or document in accordance with a selected document-finishing operation.
2. Description of Related Art
A related, convention printing system is known from European Patent Application EP 331 329, in which a copying and printing apparatus is described that is provided with a touch screen displaying various icons for selecting groups of operating functions and the operating functions themselves. By touching one of these icons, the information displayed on the touch screen is altered or the operating function associated with an icon is selected. For example, there is an icon representing a sheet reservoir. Selection of this icon results in a display on the screen of a number of different icons, each of which represents a selectable sheet reservoir. There is also an icon displaying an image of printed sheets. Selection of this icon results in the display of four different icons which represent a simplex or duplex printed sheet of an original or copy. Selection of one of these four icons results in the system being set to either simplex or duplex scanning or printing.
If there is a large number of possible functions then a large number of icons is required in this conventional system. The user is, therefore, faced with a large amount of visual information from which he must make a selection.
Another disadvantage of the conventional system is that the icons cannot all be displayed simultaneously. Thus, a user will also have to navigate between different display screens to select the desired icons. This increases the risk of the user no longer having an overview of the settings that have been made and which can still be made. In addition, navigating between different screens requires the user to carry out extra operations thereby slowing the process down and reducing efficiency.